Expats
Of course it makes sense that the retards would be in love. Like seeks like.
And I still hear the low murmurs as she boarded the yellow school bus with her brother,
matching the groan of the engine as it geared into life dragging us up Scribner Hill Road to school.
It is the laughter that I will remember most.
She, wide-eyed, amazed. Smelling of chicken fat and poverty.
Scanning the deep green vinyl of the seats looking for a place where she belongs.
To my bother.
Like seeks like.
I know what goes on inside that trailer on Scribner Hill Road.
I suspect it is much like mine.
Like seeks like.
They visited us regularly, those agents of the State.
The uniform easy to pick out. The car silver.
Compact.
American.
She checked on us like a care. A flower perennial arriving every spring,
dressed in floral tops, pink scrub pants, name-tag and I knew
my mother would be crying soon.
Washing the dishes while the social worker quietly dried and put them away.
Cynthia breaking down each time every time into the poverty tears of 1984.
1984.
The year of Saint Ronald Reagan’s coronation after a campaign of war on the poor rhetoric.
A constant song where I am reminded that Uncle Sam pays my way.
And I should never forget,
that I should be grateful for these monthly AFDC checks.
I should receive with quiet deference the manila Food Stamp envelope.
The green of the Washington One,
the purple of the Lincoln Five,
the blue of the Jackson Twenty.
The gaudy baubles we give the poor to play at adulthood.
And I should be grateful for the social worker who makes my mother cry during this
Very Special Episode of “The White Trash Show” on Prescott Road.
I watched that episode too.
We saw her less and less, that social worker, until we never saw her again.
A victim of Saint Ronnie’s budget cuts or poverty triage.
Saving herself for families that still had some hope of redemption, of breaking away,
not this lost cause from North Manchester, and once again we were on our own.
Uncle Sam just another divorce and I wasn’t going to stay either.
Fuck.
That.
Noise.
So I ran.
Always in motion always fleeing always running never stopping the eternal gypsy to Vermont to Florida to Arizona anywhere where I wasn’t an extra anywhere where the story was different start anew start over start again travel through space travel through time anything to be someone else anything to be somewhere else kicking around the country kicking around my psyche until I came back home every transformation a mutation every reinvention an imitation every road an intersection taking me back to Brunswick.
And Maine.
And I hope today’s episode, “The Expat Returns Home”
of “The White Trash Show” isn’t a rerun.
I know how it ends.
I watched that episode too.
